


The Foxes at Play

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Professionalism, Trust, kidnap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-04-07
Packaged: 2018-05-31 18:39:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6482560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is just a gut reaction to a recurrent theme in Mystrade: Lestrade personaly hurt and betrayed over being left out of the loop during "Reichenback Fall." Here's the thing. I've read some great fics working with that idea: that Lestrade, like John, would be traumatized. I love the fics. But in the end I don't buy it. I think he was quite proud of his Holmeses....</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Foxes at Play

“It must have seemed a terrible betrayal,” said the little man with the dapper suit. He fiddled his cigarette between nervous fingers, watching Lestrade the whole time.

Lestrade was trying to get a sense of things—of how tight the handcuffs were, of whether they could be broken out of. Of the ropes around his ankles. Of the danger of his captor—long term and short term. He hadn’t been following the other man’s dialog all that closely, what with all the other things he was trying to deduce. As Sherlock often said, mostly people talked drivel. You were better off with body language, it seldom lied. This last, though, caught his attention.

“Betrayal? Wha’? What’re you on about, eh?”

“Sherlock’s survival,” the man said, watching him like a cat watches the shadow of a mouse just seen under the curve of a dried, fallen leaf. “They lied to you…Sherlock and Mycroft. Lied.”

Lestrade frowned. “You’re off your nut,” he observed, and immediately lowered his assessment of whether he’d survive this encounter. Nutters were too fond of terminal endings….

“It didn’t hurt? The lies. The uncertainty? The knowledge that they’d put your career at risk?”

He feigned thinking about it, more to buy time than to reevaluate his own feelings. After a few seconds he shrugged in his bonds, and shook his head. “Nope. Got the wrong bloke if you’re lookin’ for that.”

The truth was that, after the near supernatural creep he’d felt seeing that dead man walking, had come the skylark thrill of delighted glee: the sly foxes, his sly foxes, had pulled another one off. The Holmes brothers had beat Moriarty, beat the English Press, beat the flatfoot investigators, both police and private. They’d beat the fans with their theories and the pros with their evidence. His fine, fierce beloved Holmes Boys had won again.

He studied the little man on the other side of the table. Above was a single light-bulb swaying lightly at the end of a frayed, moldering cord. The smoke from the little man’s roll-up rose in lazy loops, like the fancy-work on old calligraphy, where the signator would make filigree of the tail of his final Y. The man was avid, hungry, looking for pain, hurt, regret. Resentment.

Lestrade had none to give him. He shrugged again. “Nope. Nothing.”

“They left you out.”

“That’s kind of the nature of diddlin’ the public,” Lestrade pointed out. “Undercover. It’s like that. Amazing how many people you don’t tell when you’ve got to go under.” He knew all about that—from working with the Met. From working with MI5 and MI6. As he had tried to point out to his wife, neither policing nor espionage were careers for reflexively honest men and women. You had to be a little bent to be a straight copper or spy.

Cathy had never understood. She took things personally.

Lestrade looked at the little man. “You think ‘cause I’m their friend, I’m supposed to be angry they didn’t tell me?”

“You were hurt,” the little man said, leaning forward, licking his lips a bit too salaciously. “You were lied to. You can tell me. It won’t go any farther than here.”

“I wan’t hurt,” Lestrade said again. “Really. It’s just how the game is played.”

“Dr. Watson was hurt.”

Lestrade scoffed, softly but meaningfully. “Well. John. He’s not a copper, though, is ‘e? Not a copper. Not a spy. Just this doctor, you know. Doctor. Soldier. Loyal. Bright enough. But I don’t know how to fix a burst appendix and John doesn’t know how to put together an undercover op. If he did, he’d know—it’s not personal. No more than gravity is personal. You do what you have to do to make it fly.”

He smiled, then, the memory of that return lighting his heart, here in this dark, lost fragment of the hidden city beneath London. He was like as not to die here—but he found it helped to contemplate the pure glory of his foxes, and their brilliant scam. Fooled them all, his boys had: Mycroft and Sherlock had pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes. Like an aficionado of stage magic when presented with a world-class illusion, he could only grin his delight at the polish, the panache, the pure bravado of the sleight of hand.

“You moron,” the little man said. “You were their friend. Their partner. They put your career at risk, your relationship at risk. You had to go through it all as though that little weasel really had died.”

His voice choked, and he threw the butt of the fag away, letting it smoke itself out on the damp brick floor.

Lestrade followed the smoke up, into the cloud at the ceiling. The light swung faster, as though the anger had translated itself through floor and wall, up into the ceiling.

He looked away, meeting the little man’s eyes.

“Moriarty,” he said, and felt a certain satisfaction when the little man jumped and glared at him. Louder, more certain, he said, “Moriarty. You’re part of that lot, aren’t you? His men.”

The little man drew back his lips in a wicked snarl. “Me. I’m Moriarty.”

“Yeah. Now.” Lestrade gave a sharp, ironic laugh. “Name has fallen on hard times, hasn’t it?”

“No more than ever. It falls where it will. This time it’s me.”

“And you knew the last one, too,” Lestrade said. “Friend of the last Moriarty, weren’t you?”

“A Moriarty has no friends,” the little man hissed. “Jeff Hope—he didn’t. Our fine Jimmy—he didn’t either.”

“But you were his friend,” Lestrade said, more sure by the second. “You were close. Close as close could be. Did he tell you what he was going to do?” He watched for it, and caught it—the flick of sick pain, the anger, the hurt. “He didn’t tell you, did he.”

“He lied,” the little man’s life bled into those words. “He lied to us.”

“You thought he’d come down from that roof alive, didn’t you?”

“He never did. It was one thing when we thought Holmes had killed him and died anyway.”

“So—what is this? Revenge?”

“They’ll never forgive themselves.”

Lestrade sighed, shook his head, and leaned back against the bars of the chair-back. “You don’t understand,” he said. “That’s not how it’s played. I die? Then they’ll never forgive you. Or me for getting my arse into this mess. But themselves?” He gave a quick chuckle, almost as much growl as laughter. “They’re the fox—and the fox knows the hunt. They know who to blame for the kill.”

The lightbulb overhead had slowed in its swing again. The smoke swirled, though, in a delicate dance. Lestrade licked his lips.

“So. What are you going to do? Just shoot me? Leave me here?”

“Oh, I think I’ll learn more, first,” the Moriarty said. He began another roll-up, taking out paper, tobacco, tapping the fine-chopped leaves into the fold. “How did it feel to be left out, Lestrade? Sherlock didn’t even keep you in the loop.”

Lestrade shrugged. “Kinda too busy at the time to do more than wish it were different,” he said. “Any chance you’d let me have a drag? It’s a bit dull down here alone with no one but you to keep me company.

“Oh, you’re not alone,” the man whispered. “I’ve got men on call, hardly a shout away.” In spite of that he leaned forward and offered the lit fag to his captive.

Lestrade knew exactly how much play he had in the handcuffs—he knew the length of the chain. He knew the room he could flex. Rather than attack, he leaned forward, lipped the dry paper, sucked down smoke.

The smoke at the ceiling coiled and coiled, forming eddies and whirlpools.

Turbulence, Lestrade thought, and opened his mouth, letting the smoke float slowly, lazily up in a single mass. Only as it reached the top did it furl and unfurl, forming whorls.

“Did you know they buried him in Potter’s Field,” Lestrade said. “Moriarty, that is? Even when they still thought he was ‘Richard Brooke’ they couldn’t find his family. Couldn’t raid his savings to buy a coffin. Buried at the charity of the City of London, your man.” He gave an evil smile. “You ask me nicely, I can even tell you where. More than he bothered to tell you.”

“It wasn’t his fault,” the Moriarty said—and Lestrade heard the hurt and the loss in the cry. “He was—your damned—he didn’t mean it.”

Oh, but he had, Lestrade thought, smiling. Mad Moriarty, determined to die to force Sherlock into the grave with him.

“He wanted to die with Sherlock,” he said, and watched the words drive home.

“No.”

“Yes. It was…love, of a sort.”

“Hate.”

Lestrade shrugged. The lightbulb had resumed its earlier swing. It parted the rolls and hummocks of smoke…

“Another drag?” he asked.

The Moriarty leaned over. “Here. A dying man gets a last cigarette…”

It took only a second to flip the short chain over the little man’s wrist, grab his elbow, use the leverage to toss them both to the floor with a grunt and a shuffle and the crash of the table going over. In the midst of the scuffle he heard the thud-thud of the door being broken in.

“Watch out, he’s armed,” he shouted, even as the familiar forms tumbled in.

Donovan. Burleigh. Welkins. And of course Sherlock and John.

“What took you so long?” he growled as they pinned the little Moriarty and began to undo his shackles and ties.

“It would have helped if you’d told us a bit more,” Sherlock said, aggrieved.

“That’s not how the game is played and you know it,” Lestrade snapped, and felt his hands free. He shook them, working blood back into the fingers.  When his feet were free he rolled and sat. “Bloody hell. Sal, did the trace work?”

“Like a charm,” she said, grinning. “Never even knew you were bugged.”

“Good one, that,” Lestrade said. Then, “Did he really have people down the way?”

“Seven. Armed.” She made a face. “They weren’t ready for us, though.”

He nodded, and rose. He gave her a fierce, admiring grin. “Any skin off your nose if I go get me a pint and a shock blanket? I can write my report at home tonight and have it on your desktop by morning.”

She grinned and looked around. “Seems to me like you’ve already done the hard work, boss. Go home. We’ll deal with this lot.”

He nodded, and shook his overcoat out, letting it hang a bit more elegantly. He left the basement, Sherlock and John flanking him like body guards.

Knowing how Mycroft felt about his safety, they probably were.

He came up out of the cellar door into an alley, and looked around. AT the end of the alley, silhouetted against the light, stood a tall, lean man, long-legged, elegant, his brolly propping him securely in a jaunty pose.

He grinned, and raised a hand. “Mycroft.”

“You bastard,” Mycroft Holmes said. He gave an exasperated huff. “You might have said something.”

“Eh—they were after you and Sherlock, and I saw my chance,” he replied, walking toward the man in the light.

“Still,” Mycroft said.

“Mad at me?”

Mycroft smiled—a lean, feral grin. “Only if you’d lost the game,” he said. He clapped one neat black-gloved hand behind Lestrade’s neck and pulled him close—not an embrace, but the gesture of a Mafia don, or a warrior toward another warrior. Then he let Lestrade go, looking tactfully away. “Home?” he said.

“Home,” Lestrade agreed. “So you still love me?”

“I never!” Mycroft scoffed, affecting shock. “Who said I did?”

“But you do, right?”

Mycroft, striding toward the black car that would carry them home, said, “Perhaps.”

And Lestrade smiled, knowing that his foxes loved their own fox—sly-fox Lestrade, who knew how the game was played.


End file.
